Chapter 69
Chapter 64: Making A Promise To Find Her
Logan’s POV
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“That’s what you said before.” he pointed out, not happy with the non-answer that i kept giving him. It was starting to grate on his nerves, it’s been more than a month with no contact from his mum, and he was beginning to assume the worst. Especially with sherry saying something about her contracting a deadly illness and probably dead on the street.
“I know.” i said again, as it bore repeating, but i had nothing else in my catalogue.
He didn’t push it this time or insisted that i gave him a more definite answer. He just settled back against the hospital pillow, small in the bed with his IV line and his diminishing hives that were beginning to look less worse now that the reaction had been taken care of.
The cartoon was chattering away on the television, and after a while his eyes started to get heavy, drowsy after spending the better half of twenty four hours being uncomfortable and in pain, unable to rest.
“Dad?” he said, when he was half-asleep, his eyes barely open and his tone drowsy.
“Yeah p>
“If you find her, can you tell her I didn’t mean it? The bad things.” He yawned, eyes closing fully. “She probably thought I meant it but I didn’t. I just said it because Grandma said stuff about her being suffocating and how she never wanted me to experience things and stay in a bubble where i would not grow and I was mad because i wanted to experience everything. I didn’t mean any of it p>
“I’ll tell her,” I said, focusing on keeping my promise to him, rather than focusing on the words that my mum had been spilling into his ears when i had been distracted by Catherine.
He was asleep within minutes, his breathing evening out, as it was slow and steady and i let out a huge breath of relief, feeling the load that had been placed on my heart dissolving slowly, when my mind immediately made the connection that this nightmare would soon be behind us.
i could see the lines of discomfort smoothing from his face as the IV antihistamines did their work. He looked younger asleep. He always did, but especially tonight-small and uncomplicated, a six-year-old who missed his mother and didn’t understand why she wasn’t there.
I sat in the plastic chair beside his hospital bed, not willing to leave him alone in case he needed
me and i wasn’t there and watched him sleep and thought about what he’d said. She probably thought I meant it but I didn’t.
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Making A Promise To Find Her
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I’d thought the same thing. That he meant it, that all of it was genuine-the things he’d said at the hospital, the dismissal, the preference for Catherine’s permissiveness over Sedona’s careful vigilance, even before then, from when i started bringing Catherine home and letting her overrule sedona’s rule concerning Nick, with words like, it is harmless, a little play wouldn’t hurt, he is a growing boy, one bite wouldn’t hurt, i had allowed catherine to win the battle and stand vindicated when nothing immediately happened to Nick.
From that moment, Nick had become a lot more stubborn and refusing to agree with sedona’s on things he normally did. I’d taken his side, had let it stand, had never sat down with my son and said, you cannot say those things to your mother, the person who has kept you alive and loved you since before you even knew what love was.
I hadn’t corrected it. I’d let a six-year-old wound his mother with words and I’d called it him growing up, called it him finding his own voice, told Sedona she was being oversensitive when she was devastated by it and that Nickk needed to have things that he liked that didn’t align with what she assumed because she was suffocating him and me as well, by imposing all these rules.
The guilt that had been sitting in my chest since the hospital parking lot, since i sat down in the parking lot and cried for the woman i never made feel safe with me- became something I understood I was going to be carrying for a very long time.
The IV machine beeped quietly. Nick’s chest rose and fell. The cartoon on the muted television continued playing its content, not caring nobody was paying attention to it.
I was going to find her.
The private investigator had come up empty on paper trails. The private investigator that i hired was looking for her, like i paid him to do. But I’d been passive about it-waiting for results to come to me, waiting to be handed her location, waiting for Sedona to somehow make herself findable while simultaneously knowing she’d left specifically to avoid being found.
I looked at my son sleeping in a hospital bed because the remedy that would have stopped this in its tracks in an hour had walked out the door with the woman who made it, and i came to the grim realization of something settling in me.
I was not going to sit in hospital waiting rooms being passive. I was not going to wait for reports and updates and gentle suggestions. I had built something from nothing through sheer relentless effort and I had stopped applying that capacity to the things that actually mattered, had saved it all for the company and given the scraps to the people who deserved more of me than they’d
gotten.
Nick’s hand lay open on the hospital blanket, small fingers loosely curled. I looked at it for a moment, then covered it gently with mine, careful not to disturb the IV.
THU
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Making A Promise To Find Her
Tell her I didn’t mean it.
Claim
I’d been telling myself I was looking for Sedona because she was sick and she needed help. That was true. But sitting here, in this specific hospital room, watching my son sleep with hives across his body because the one person who knew how to stop it wasn’t here-I admitted the other truth.
I was looking for her because we needed her. Both of us. We had needed her the entire time and I’d been too busy, too distracted, too convinced of my own priorities to see it.
I was going to find that family, her family she never told me about and one i never bothered asking about, even if she told me she was an orphan, i hadn’t asked her for stories to keep the memory
moving on.
I was going to find her.
Tomorrow.
Nick stirred slightly, murmured something I couldn’t hear, settled back into sleep.
I stayed where I was, his hand under mine, and made the kind of silent promises that no one hears but that you carry anyway.
I’m going to find her. I’m going to bring her home.
And then, somehow, we were going to figure out the rest.
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